Uncorrected version, accepted by Nature + Culture
New wine and old wineskins? Novel ecosystems and conceptual change
Brendon M. H. Larson
Department of Environment and Resource Studies
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L3G1
Email: blarson@uwaterloo.ca
AND
Centre for Invasion Biology
Department of Botany and Zoology
Stellenbosch University
Matieland 7602
South Africa
Abstract
The concept of novel ecosystems (CNE) has been proposed as a way to recognize the extent and value
of ecosystems that have been irreversibly transformed by human activity. In this sense, the CNE is
realistic about ongoing changes that humans are causing and pragmatic about how to manage them now
and in the future. It also provides a dramatic contrast with prevailing conceptions, particularly related
to invasive species. Although the CNE has recently been subject to critique, existing critiques do not
appear to seriously engage with the extent of anthropogenic change to the world’s ecosystems. Here, I
seek to provide a deeper, philosophical and constructive critique, specifically arguing that the
usefulness of the CNE is limited in the following three ways: i) it is too static; ii) it is too vague; and
iii) it is too dualistic. Although the CNE provides some conceptual advance (‘new wine’), some of its
conceptualization and packaging weakly support this advance (‘old wineskins’), so I consider some
ways to further develop it, in part to encourage more widespread recognition and appreciation of novel
ecosystems.
Keywords
Anthropocene, nature-culture, rhetoric, social-ecological system, wilderness
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Introduction
Traditionally, conservation has focused on areas that are relatively free of human influence, in
particular large wilderness areas. However, with increasing recognition of human effects on the planet,
the adequacy of this approach is increasingly questioned in cases ranging from invasive species (Head
2012) to wilderness (Cronon 1995) to the planet as a whole (Steffen et al. 2011). There have been
dramatic proposals to actively “introduce” human agency into natural areas, including Pleistocene
rewilding (Donlan et al. 2006) and assisted colonization (McLachlan et al. 2007). But an emerging
nexus for this shift is the concept of novel ecosystems (CNE, sensu Hobbs et al. 2006, 2009, 2013a), a
novel ecosystem (NE) being defined as “a system of abiotic, biotic and social components (and their
interactions) that, by virtue of human influence, differ from those that prevailed historically, having a
tendency to self-organize and manifest novel qualities without intensive human management (Hobbs et
al. 2013b, p. 58; Figure 1).” The proposal to attend to these NE and to understand rather than denigrate
them is based in part on the recognition that, by recent estimates, they cover on the order of 28-36% of
the planet’s ice-free land (Perring and Ellis 2013).
--Insert Figure 1 about here-Unsurprisingly, the CNE has been subject to recent critique. Murcia et al. (2014, in press), in
particular, claim that NE are not as ubiquitous as claimed, mainly protesting that there is little evidence
that irreversible thresholds to “novelty” have been crossed—not least because we have a growing
capacity to restore disturbed ecosystems. In short, they conclude that the CNE sows confusion among
governments that have already committed to restoration and that it “opens the door to impunity” by
corporate interests wishing to devalue natural systems. In the words of Crist (2013, p. 129; and see
Wuerthner et al. 2014), Anthropocene discourse—and by association, that about novel ecosystems—is
“tenaciously anthropocentric,” it “refuses to challenge human dominion,” and it “blocks from
consideration the possibility of abolishing a way of life founded on the domination of nature.”
3
These critiques raise several important points, yet they also highlight some unavoidable
tensions for those wrestling with the meaning of contemporary conservation (e.g., see Houston 2013,
Karlsson 2013, Ogden et al. 2013, Robbins and Moore 2013). The fundamental limitation of these
critiques, in my view, is that they appear to misjudge the actual extent of humans’ influence on the
planet (cf. Hobbs et al. 2014, submitted). I see no evidence that the CNE endorses future development
or human dominion; instead, it raises new possibilities for places that have already been affected by
development or human dominion. A recent edited volume, for example, predicts that the impact of
invasive species will continue to grow in coming decades in European protected areas, U.S. national
parks, and the southern Ocean islands, among other places, despite the best efforts of conservationists
(Foxcroft et al. 2013). As a specific and dramatic example, McNeely (2013, p. 64) reflects on the extent
to which earthworms have transformed woodland ecosystems in northeastern North America, and
concludes that “Eradicating these earthworms is impossible, so this ecosystem change is essentially
permanent (p. 64).” Ecologist contributors Meiners and Pickett (2013, p. 56) are therefore being
realistic and pragmatic when they recommend that “we should expect and plan for plant invasions
within protected areas (p. 56).” The CNE does not endorse these changes, but simply seeks to
acknowledge them and propose a role for NE in conservation.
In this context, there is much to be said for the CNE. It acknowledges humans as part of
ecological systems, so it is realistic about the scale of change and encourages a pragmatic response. It
does not focus on past reference states, for example, instead acknowledging the actual state of extant
systems. Finally, it provides a positive alternative to the prevailing doomsday scenarios about the future
of the planet. In what follows, I assume that the CNE is useful, but it is also in need of ongoing
development. To facilitate this development, I wish to interrogate it with a deeper and perhaps more
philosophical analysis than has occurred to date to uncover some of its underlying assumptions. We
have arguably been hampered by the inadequate worldview of humans versus nature for a long time,
seen most clearly in our perception and approach to invasive species, and now we have the opportunity
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to fundamentally rethink conservation (e.g., Wapner 2010, Marris 2011, Sandler 2013). In this context,
it is particularly important to carefully examine any remaining seeds of the former worldview. By
analogy to the old conservationist worldview, one would not want to begin a restoration project without
first seeking to eliminate the seed bank of potentially invasive species. If the vision for NE biology is to
help humans to act more appropriately and fittingly in the Anthropocene, it must continuously further
itself from some of the problematic assumptions of the past. I specifically consider three dimensions of
the CNE that need further consideration: i) it is too static; ii) it is too vague; and iii) it is too dualistic.
1. Static
Over the past several decades, there has been a growing emphasis on the prevalence of disturbance and
change in ecological systems (e.g., Coates 1998). The CNE furthers this trend, thereby accentuating the
dynamism of socio-ecological landscapes. At a basic level, novelty simply refers to change relative to a
previous state, and by recognizing such change, the CNE helps to undo previous views of nature as
stable and permanent. As Mascaro et al. (2013, p. 51) argue, “the novel ecosystems concept is
grounded first in Gleason’s individualistic concept that species respond differently when faced with
environmental change; ecosystems are therefore not the discrete units they may appear to be.” Neither
are they static, which Lindenmayer et al. 2008 (p. 131) recognize in their description of novel bird
communities in Australia: “Indeed, the novel ecosystem we have quantified is unlikely to be a static
entity.” The CNE may provide a new meta-narrative for how to understand ongoing changes, and
especially ones related to human action.
However, it could be argued that the prevailing meaning of “ecosystem” is too static to facilitate
this shift. An ecosystem is commonly conceived as a thing on the landscape, part of the
“compositionalist” approach to conservation, which emphasizes the species making up an ecosystem,
in contrast to the “functionalist” approach, which emphasizes the functions that ecosystems perform
(Callicott et al. 1999). By focusing on ecosystems, the CNE therefore runs the risk of management of
5
NE as objects and entities of conservation like other bounded ecosystems. Certainly, this may be true of
much ecological thought, yet we now have an opportunity to reconsider and revise those fundamentals.
The CNE brackets novel systems as if there is a discontinuity between something non-novel earlier and
something novel now, perhaps suggesting that we can return to some “business as usual” of stable
ecosystems (stable, novel ecosystems?) at some point in the future (cf. Marris et al. 2013). In this way,
NE could eventually become reified as stabilized things too, just like the old ones. The introduction of
“novelty” into ecological and conservation thinking alternatively points towards a more process-based
view of reality, a view in which the foundations we take for granted or assume are less solid (e.g., Gare
1995). Instead, nature is more fluid, more Heraclitian; it is a world of becoming.
It is critical to maintain dynamism in our conceptions because these systems will keep
changing, not only in response to global change as we currently understand it, but in ways we do not
even foresee (e.g., Sutherland et al. 2013). Twenty-five years ago, invasive species had just become
recognized as a significant biodiversity issue. What will be the new and critical issue in another 25
years? It may be nanoparticles. Or a cyborg future that some say is already here, given the presence of
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) the size of hummingbirds and “living moths [that have] been
implanted with electrodes in their nervous systems to control their movements (Bowcott and Hopkins
2012).” It is worth keeping in mind that some scholars who question the nature-culture split (see
below) have begun to extend a similar argument to the human-machine split, arguing that there is little
basis for that dichotomy—especially given current developments in modern medicine (White and
Wilbert 2009).
In this rapidly changing world, we need to revisit how we usually think of conservation and it is
questionable in my view whether the CNE invites such exploration. Nature is now more relativistic and
characterized by change, and scholars have been trying to make sense of this development for several
decades (e.g., Lodge and Hamlin 2006). The anthropologist Tim Ingold (2008, p. 1802, 1808), for
example, claims that
6
what is unthinkable is the idea that life is played out upon the inanimate surface of a readymade world. Inhabitants, I contend, make their way through a world-in-formation rather than
across its preformed surface … Instead of saying that living beings exist in places, I would thus
prefer to say that places occur along the life paths of beings. Life itself, far from being an
interior property of animate objects, is an unfolding of the entire meshwork of paths in which
beings are entangled.
This is not a static world of reserves, but a much more dynamic one where species move and relate for
intermittent periods of time.
Part of the problem here lies in the nature of our language. A label such as “ecosystem”
captures and reifies an object. The physicist David Bohm (1980) similarly noted that English is
inadequate to communicating quantum realities, so he experimented with what he called the
“rheomode” as a way to avoid our usual emphasis on nouns. His experiment was an invitation to his
readers to more directly realize that nature is a world of becoming—that is, one of comings and goings,
of verbs. However, we lack a way to write without nouns, so we have created solid external objects that
the sciences may study, rather than engaging with the emerging process in which we are all involved.
Ecosystems are no longer things, because we are embedded within them. They are becomings. Like the
rheomode, we are seeking a new and more accurate way to portray them.
One simple option for reducing this tendency to reify is to follow Milton (2003, p. 404) and
adopt the term “emerging” ecosystem, defined as “an ecosystem whose species composition and
relative abundance have not previously occurred within a given biome.” In fact, this was an early
choice of terminology, but “we couldn’t get that past the reviewers/editors (R. Hobbs, personal
communication, July 9, 2013).” Yet this label would arguably better acknowledge the fundamental
notion of becoming; emerging ecosystems are always-already emerging. They are emerging from what
was before, and they will remain emerging. Emerging, as a verb, is an ongoing process that never ends,
7
whereas a “novel” ecosystem can, with time, become not-so-novel anymore. The CNE could recreate
the illusion that these systems too can be captured at a point in time.
ii) Vague
The CNE is vague in at least four ways that restrict its value for revising conservation in the
Anthropocene. First, what precisely is novel about NE? Their novelty is ill-defined because even
within the revised definition proposed in the new book by Hobbs et al. (2013a) there is a residual
circularity, NE being defined in terms of their difference from historical ecosystems insofar as they
“manifest novel qualities.” Furthermore, ecological systems have always been in flux, as discussed
above, so one could argue that “there is nothing new about novel ecosystems (e.g., Jackson 2013, p.
64).” This is not an argument for crystal clarity in the formation of new concepts, when some
ambiguity is often unavoidable if not productive, but the novelty of NE could be further specified. For
example, the alternative of “functional” ecosystem would shift inquiry onto the question of “what
function” rather than “what is new?” However, this shift undoubtedly moves the CNE in a managerial
direction that is of concern within some critiques of related notions such as the Anthropocene (e.g.,
Crist 2013).
Second, the CNE applies at one scale only, which begs the question of application at other
scales and the potential for greater generality. Ecology normally recognizes scales ranging from genes
through species to communities and ecosystems. Why not specify novel genes, novel species, novel
communities, and novel ecosystems? By restricting novelty to just the ecosystem scale, NE might be
interpreted to mean that there are other scales where it is inapplicable. Clearly, there is value to
specifying this one level of novelty, but the CNE may have been better packaged as part of a crossscalar recognition of novelty. As just one example, Schwarz et al. (2005) demonstrate the origin of a
new species of fly when its ancestor moved onto a new, non-native species of host plant in northeastern
North America.
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Third, it is unclear whether the CNE is meant to be used descriptively or prescriptively. One of
its co-creators, for example, observes that “We didn’t intend ‘novel ecosystems’ to be a forward
looking term, but a descriptive one (E. Higgs, personal communication, August 4, 2013).” I have
already suggested that it may not be descriptive enough, but the greater challenge will be to restrict it to
a descriptive meaning in this way. In particular, the terminology leaves open the potential for people to
interpret this “novelty” as a good thing in itself, thus propounding novelty for novelty’s sake, even if
that is not its intent (cf. Standish et al. 2013). It is worth keeping in mind that most people do not have
enough connection with more “historical” systems to recognize novelty or to assess its significance.
Thus, the question is whether the CNE puts appropriate limits on novelty, recognizing not only that
there are different forms of change and novelty, but also that not all of them are desirable. It might not
be clear enough that we may transgress significant ecological limits, assuming such limits are not—in
the current era—anachronistic or mere natural history sentiment.
In short, the CNE is agnostic on the question of passive versus more active forms of novelty,
which perhaps could have been disambiguated. One type of NE “just happens,” passively, perhaps
what Marris et al. (2013, p. 347) refer to as “undirected succession.” This form of novelty may be
somewhat contentious, but it would not rattle conservationists as much as alternatives: actively
constructed, designer, and synthetic ecosystems (e.g., MacMahon and Holl 2002). These active ways of
creating novelty suggest a hubris that we can create systems as we wish, which could engender the
tendency to prefer what has been called “hyperreality,” a man-made reality that is better than the real
thing—perhaps ecosystems without mosquitoes and poison ivy. As Borgmann (1995, p. 39) put it,
“Today the critical and crucial distinction for nature and humans is not between the natural and
artificial but between the real and hyperreal.” That is, some proponents may interpret NE as a means to
a utilitarian end, to designing human playgrounds as they see fit. Yet I think the intention of those who
introduced the CNE was to bring value to under-appreciated systems that already exist rather than to
9
endorse modifying systems that are currently less influenced by humans. It is unfortunate that the
terminology is vague in this respect.
This third limitation points to a fourth and related form of vagueness. The purpose of the CNE,
as a rhetorical invention, is to describe these systems and also to make a case that they exist and that
they are pertinent to conservation thinking. The CNE also shifts perception of ecological change from a
rather apocalyptic one, focused on destruction, to a more hopeful one (e.g., Yung et al. 2012).
However, there is reason to question whether this terminology will galvanize the interest and
imagination of everyday people. Traditionally, people’s values towards nature, especially in North
America, have derived from the notion of a balance of nature. This metaphor was a call to action to link
what “is” with what “ought to be” (see Fleming 2006; Larson 2011); that is, humans ought to maintain
the balance that existed since time immemorial. But what will accomplish this call to action now, if
anything?
The problem is that in avoiding prescription, the CNE is too vague to motivate people to care
for NE, to recognize their value. We need to more attentively consider which “propaganda tool” we
will use (Marris et al. 2013, p. 346). In contrast to the descriptive intent of the CNE, mentioned above,
Marris et al. (2013, p. 346) state that “Its purpose is not to describe certain places as they are, but to
color our emotional reaction to certain places in order to make us see possibilities were [sic] we
formerly only saw failure.” NE are no longer “trash” or “degraded systems,” but the CNE does not
seem to communicate sufficient value. We require a term that is more catchy, more sticky, and NE does
not quite succeed (e.g., Heath and Heath 2007). It is too jargony and the only alternatives to date are
Emma Marris’ (2009, 2011) valiant attempts elsewhere to frame it more broadly. However, I am
skeptical that “ragamuffin earth” is quite right either (Marris 2009), given that ragamuffin is defined by
my Webster’s 3rd as “a ragged dirty man or boy, especially a disreputably tattered person” (or “a child
in masquerade costume”). This does not fit with the more positive conceptions Marris espouses. As an
alternative, her recent book is entitled Rambunctious Garden (Marris 2011). “Rambunctious” means
10
“1. outrageously flamboyant in behavior, excessively exuberant, wild, uncontrollable, unruly; 2.
difficult to manage or bring under control, untamed.” Again, this option does not appear to be a truly
inspiring and positive vision for conceptualizing these systems.
iii) Dualistic
Finally, the CNE too easily reinforces a duality between humans and nature. This claim may seem
counter-intuitive because CNE is often touted as a way to break down the traditional duality (cf. Yung
et al. 2013). It recognizes that conservation has been ironically and profoundly anti-Darwinian; that is,
Darwin helped us to recognize we are not the centre of the living world (like Copernicus before him),
yet we have not fully understood this in an ecological context: viewing ourselves as outside of nature,
managing it, we still sometimes neglect to see ourselves as part of ecosystems.
However, there are several indications of a residual duality in the CNE. Novelty has to be
relevant to something, so it implies a black-white contrast, when in fact human effects on nature have
been going on for a long time, not least since the agricultural revolution (but see Malm and Hornborg
2014). Yet the duality can be observed, in particular, in the standard mapping of the space in which
NEs occur along a continuum from undisturbed to disturbed biotic and abiotic conditions (see Figure
1). In the middle of this mapping there are hybrid ecosystems: “Novel ecosystems are distinguished
from hybrid ecosystems by practical limitations (a combination of ecological, environmental and social
thresholds) on the recovery of historical qualities (Hobbs et al. 2013b, p. 58).” These hybrid
ecosystems could still be returned to a former state because intransigent boundaries have not yet been
transgressed. But the presence of this intermediate zone implies that there are areas not so hybridized,
on the extremes: historical and novel systems.
Such dualities are at odds with arguments that hybridization is everywhere (e.g., Latour 1993,
Arias-Maldonado 2013), which encourages us to move beyond such conceptions that reify pre-existing
nature-society categories. There are no places where humans have not had at least some degree of
11
influence. This point is not meant to be a warrant for devaluing places that have been less affected, but
it does draw into question the very idea of “historical” systems. In this regard, the CNE does not go far
enough. Some social theoreticians in fact argue that nature is even more malleable than we think, even
more interwoven with humans, that there is an “intra-action” (Barad 2007) rather than an “interaction”
that posits two pre-existing entities (as “hybrid” does). While some scholars argue it is pointless to say
that all ecosystems are novel (Mascaro et al. 2013), Marris et al. (2013) propose that eventually
everything will more clearly be novel, so the term will no longer be needed—and perhaps soon if not
already. This debate remains a critical and unresolved tension even among contributors to the recent
edited volume about NE (Hobbs et al. 2013a).
There are deeper ways in which the CNE may hinder recognition of the embeddedness of
humans in the natural world. Note that NEs are almost always discussed as a change in ecological
systems in response to human agency and behavior. But partly what is remarkable is not so much the
novelty of these ecosystems as the recognition that they are not over-and-against humans as we are
often conceptualized, but always-already evolving and having human content. They have come into
being to a greater or lesser extent under human influence; they should not be artifactualized/reified as
separately existing objects. In other words, this is not a nature happening on its own without humans
(“wilderness”), but one in which we are quite involved. As Proctor (2009, pp. 296-7) has observed of
“environment,” “etymologically … that which surrounds,” something has been lost over the past few
decades: “the environment as connection. Now it is an object among other objects to be managed…
Environment started as a relation, a sense of connection, then turned into a thing.” The question is
whether the CNE assists the shift to reconceptualize nature in terms of relationship, the relationship of
people and nature.
To give a specific example, consider that one of the defining characteristics of contemporary
life is that human diaspora now move extensively around the globe. These new colonists are
surrounded by NEs, which are novel from their perspective regardless of whether they are in fact novel
12
ecological systems (Pizarro et al., in preparation). It may be for this reason that these people may find a
non-native species with which they are familiar, from their place of origin, to be non-novel and
welcoming in their new place. Note that this form of ecological novelty has been going on for a long
time (much as the ecological sense), yet it is not really considered in the literature to date. The point is
that NEs have been conceptualized in terms of a fairly simplistic biological basis (e.g., with a static
human baseline), when they are better understood as novel social-ecological systems.
The recognition that NE are novel social-ecological systems gives rise to a greater series of
reflections on the way different cultures (and stakeholders) may relate to and interact with these
changes. Just as there are diverse ways that people interact with invasive species—sometimes positive
and sometimes negative (e.g., Pfeiffer and Voeks 2008), people will have similar and varied
interactions with NEs. In particular, we need to address critical yet to date unconsidered questions
about the environmental justice of NEs, in terms of who gains and who loses when they are
acknowledged and recognized. In some respects, the marginality of many NE may open up
conversations about conservation to a wider range of people than have hitherto been included.
Concluding thoughts
Novel ecosystems are not just about novelty in ecological systems, but in our mindset and worldview
as well. In particular, NE involve human society, so science will not hold a privileged position in
decision making about them because they will be an emergent outcome of interactions among different
stakeholders, values, and interests (cf. Hobbs et al. 2010, Lorimer 2012, Arias-Maldonado 2013, Seidl
et al. 2013). Scientists will still be important knowledge brokers of what the trade-offs are and where
they occur, for example in terms of the relation between species and function. Yet, overall, decisions
about NE will require broader upstream engagement with a wide cross-section of society and varied
stakeholders. Novel ecosystems are plural, rather than single, and at least in some instances they may
13
be outcomes in part of design—design that could help to bring local communities together (e.g., Higgs
2003).
Such shifts in values have happened before. Merchant (1980), for example, describes the “death
of nature” that occurred when a living, feminine nature was “killed” by the rise of scientific approaches
to the study of nature. More recently, there has been increasing account of the “end of nature”
(McKibben 1989), which could be called the second death of nature. Here, we lose a further conception
of nature, the idea that nature is separate from humans. Yet, at the same time, many critics have pointed
out that that idea of separate nature or wilderness had been dead for a long time—if it ever existed
(Cronon 1995). Perhaps we felt separate because of the prior “death of nature” through the scientific
worldview that set us off from nature. At this time, we should recognize the current era as an
opportunity to begin to rework an appropriate relation between humans and nature, given that the idea
of a separate nature was never really appropriate. After the “end of nature” there is “ecological
novelty”—it is the phoenix that rises from what is left after the end of nature; it is the new beginning.
This discussion may appear to rejoice in anthropocentric domination of the planet, but it instead
acknowledges a continuum of human effects along with its rejection of the human-nature dichotomy.
There are certainly ecosystems that are somewhat “intact” (sensu Caro et al. 2011)—and they should be
treasured, just as there are ecosystems at the other, anthropogenic end of the spectrum. In between,
there will be a range of options, including places where society should and will wish to expend the
resources (time, money, patience) necessary for restoration. Yet in other places this will not occur, and
a critical contribution of the CNE is that these places can still have value.
It is not necessarily inconsistent to talk of conserving nature after the end of nature (cf. AriasMaldonado 2013). Proctor (2013), for example, reviews six recent books about the Anthropocene, half
critical and half promotional, and he concludes that what they have in common is that they can only
“count to one or two,” meaning the former can only count nature and culture as distinct, a dualism, and
the latter can only lump them together monistically. In both cases, Proctor (2013, p. 91) notes that
14
“some version of nature is essentialized as a consistent moral rule.” This may have served us in the
past, but it is inadequate to the world in which we now live. Accordingly, in the process of exploring
the CNE and related concepts, we will necessarily encounter paradoxes and inconsistencies in the
entangling of humanity with nature.
Some conservationists will even celebrate NE because through them we are bringing new forms
of diversity and expression into the world. This is by no means to say that all will be well just with a
diversity of built/urban environments. For it is still critical to maintain the tension in the conflicting
values at play, in this case to retain value for what is other-than-human, what is wild, perhaps what was
called “nature,” but not without learning and exploring what our entanglements are, which we wish to
maintain and encourage, which we wish to reduce or even outlaw, and which changes are out of our
hands entirely. We might still wish to recognize that “what is old among us is by that very fact worthy
of respect and mimicry, [and] that what is very old is likely to be wise (Worster 1995, p. 81).”
The acceptance of NE, in this view, requires acceptance of change. It is difficult for us to accept
that all things pass and change, yet important to recognize that this is not the same as “anything goes.”
Buddhism, for example, teaches that wisdom is in part the experiential recognition that humans to a
large degree suffer (dukkha) because we treat things as permanent when everything is impermanent
(anicca). But they further state that enlightenment requires more than this wisdom; on an analogy with
the two wings needed for a bird to fly, the other wing necessary for enlightenment is refined
compassion for suffering—in this case, for species going extinct, for the angst many of us feel as
favored places and species cease to exist.
Acknowledgements
I appreciate comments on an earlier version of this manuscript from Eric Higgs, Richard Hobbs,
Christoph Kueffer, and Libby Robin, and critical feedback from two anonymous reviewers and my
students.
15
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Figure 1. Novel ecosystems are characterized by the degree to which their biotic and abiotic elements
have been altered relative to historical conditions, with hybrid ecosystems considered intermediate (see
text). [Source: Hobbs et al. 2009, though note that permission has not yet been obtained for use of this
figure; if paper is accepted, I will provide a version for this paper.]
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